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StarWind HCA

StarWind HCA

Overview

What is StarWind HCA?

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

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Recent Reviews

Top product and good price policy

8 out of 10
August 31, 2022
We would like to have a cheaper solution compared to a storage system but with all the advantages and not the disadvantages. Here only …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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What is StarWind HCA?

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwi…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Scale Computing Platform?

Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully…

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Product Details

What is StarWind HCA?

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a turnkey hyper-converged platform that merges compute, storage, network, and software into a nuclear 2-node footprint. The solution is designed to simplify HCI management for Enterprise ROBO, SMB & Edge, while offering flexible scalability and powerful performance.

Users can start with two nodes, based on HeartBeat, that can be switchless and function without additional equipment. StarWind HCA is a software-centric architecture that removes the need for proprietary components. StarWind Engineers perform the configuration, testing, migration, and integration for users, free of charge.

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance:

  • allows using 100% of underlying storage performance
  • has no hardware compatibility lists (HCLs)
  • does 2- or 3-way replication + local RAID 5/6/10
  • does VAAI and ODX data offloading
  • includes load balancing and data locality
  • does VM-centric hypervisor-level snapshots, and more.

To minimize CapEx and OpEx further, StarWind ProActive Premium Support (included in every license) substitutes an IT squad for the sake of cluster health assurance. ProActive Support monitors user environments 24/7/365, and uses machine learning to detect abnormal behavior so issues are prevented before they can become a problem.

The vendor presents StarWind HCA as a hyper-converged world enclosed in a tiny “building block” that comes at a reasonable price.

StarWind HCA Video

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

StarWind HCA Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.

Scale Computing Platform and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure are common alternatives for StarWind HCA.

Reviewers rate Availability and Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.7.

The most common users of StarWind HCA are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(63)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 54)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have heard a lot about AI and have already used it as an alternative. This is not used in the HCA and therefore we cannot make any statements about it at the moment. In the future, the AI may replace the colleagues, but the proactive, human monitoring in connection with checkmk, etc. is more familiar and safer at the moment.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We had a couple minor issues with our cluster, both issues were caught by StarWind HyperConverged Appliance's proactive monitoring and we were quickly alerted to these issues by StarWind HyperConverged Appliance support. Their support helped us fix both issues with plenty of guidance. In one case we needed to replace a server part, which was fairly simple (move VM's to one host and shutdown the other). The other was rebuilding one of the vSAN storages, which was also painless and involved zero downtime.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've been contacted a few times already when the proactive support team could not detect our servers. One time it was mainly due to a firewall issue which we quickly resolved. The other two times were due to the fact that we had to shutdown our systems due to two hurricanes within a month. StarWind was quick to notify my that they lost monitoring capability when we shutdown for the storms.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When our VSAN software needs to be updated the team reached out and guided us through the upgrades. We have not had other issues that I'm aware of that triggered and needed events. Overall the operation of servers has been solid so no real reasons for StarWind to reach out to us.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Always proactive to assist with issues, quick to respond, and help you get the servers back up and running in a short amount of time. Support is always knowledgeable, willing to help, and to look into anything you ask them when things are quite working as expected.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
They know before I know... I like it; it has served us well over the last 18 months. There has only been one critical issue that was identified and handled before any data loss occurred. (Missed SSD firmware update) Support had us back right in no time.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
The system was implemented so that StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) can proactively point out problems and hardware defects that are still hidden from our IT, and four eyes are always better than two. It also takes the burden off our IT which is much more efficient than monitoring everything in-house. An SLA agreement is also offered along with on-site support with technicians.
Justin Graves | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Support is second to none compared to other vendors I've worked with. These folks are on top of it at all times. No matter the time of day or year, if something is amiss, I get a notification from support, and they are eager to solve the problem. I would put Starwind support up against any other support out there.
Mikel Reber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Literally, while writing this review, I just received an email from starwind saying my VSAN version was out of date due to a recent update coming out and they offered to help me install it. Its just amazing how "on top of it" support is. They'll monitor downtime, reboots, version issues, even the bios firmware on the Dell servers... I can't imagine using any other vendor, they just do it all, and they do it well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
StarWind has been very proactive about reaching out when they detect even a potential issue on their end. In fact most of my support sessions have been initiated by them due to something they noticed in the logs on their end, not something we noticed. Not sure if any of these issues would have ever been critical for us, but its nice to know that they are being proactive about potential issues and keeping us up-to-date on firmware and updates.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We had a drive failure on one of our hosts. StarWind support notified us almost immediately after the failure happened. After some basic troubleshooting with StarWind support over the phone, they worked directly with Dell to provide a replace drive NBD. Support has proactively reached out to us to install software updates to our hosts. This has been a simple and quick process.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The proactive support is nice, but didn't provide much value to us. Nearly all issues that triggered an alert from the proactive system were felt immediately by users and prompted a swift internal response while the alerts were often sent several hours later, either after the issue was resolved by internal technicians or the issue was transient and resolved itself. Our interactions with support were excellent outside of the proactive monitoring
Dan Reynolds | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We haven't had any breaks or issues. But part of the reason for purchasing was to have the proactive support. I am an IT department of one and provide all the support. So having this as part of the package is worth a lot to me and the company. It provides us an extra set of eyes to monitor a key resource.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This has benefited me as I have less worry about the system having any downtime or have to worry about if my staff members see problems as StarWind will call my engineers directly to ensure everyone is made aware of any issue that may arise or has already happened and need someone to physically intervene.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The support is always helpful, prompt and useful. That's more than I can say for any other vendor I've worked with. The proactive has highlighted issues with some of VM's that I may not have otherwise spotted as quickly, which has prompted us to get the issues fixed before they become a larger issue.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The service is actually really great. They install a simple monitoring tool that reports back to their home office. If they see something is off, they contact you right away!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
StarWind Virtual SAN has been a great product for us. The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared to a traditional SAN. Great redundancy is achieved at a fraction of the cost compared to other solutions. Full support and monitoring are available 24/7. We've had experience with other solutions such as NetApp and Dell SAN, but StarWind was by far a better solution for us. Overall, very satisfied.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
StarWind's proactive support will notify us of any non-responsive issues that they may see on their end. Thankfully, no serious issues with the HCA's have occurred but several times network connectivity was lost to the HCAs and StarWind's proactive support notified us.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Every time we have a hiccup, StarWind support reaches out to me. Let me be clear though, this is rarely ever because of the appliance. It is most often network issues caused by our ISP making the environment appear to be offline. Whatever the cause though, they are on top of it immediately.
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